Route optimization
Streamline dispatch processes with efficiency-driven routes
Route optimization helps businesses assign drivers and sequence thousands of deliveries efficiently while considering constraints like traffic, vehicle types, and service times, reducing costs and improving operations.
With the lack of an integrated routing feature , many users found Detrack not sufficient for their needs and opted for alternatives. Most of them relied on Detrack’s 3rd party service - Elastic Route. However, its setup complexity is extremely time consuming and data sync issues caused a lot of friction. Alternatives like Circuit had job limitations and was costly, while manual assignment in Excel was inefficient due to inability to quantify units of capacity and traffic constraints.
With Route optimization integrated within Detrack, it allows us to open up a new product tier, where we can upsell users from Detrack Pro to Detrack Advanced.
Date
Project
Tools
Aug 2023 - Jul 2025
Detrack Systems
Figma
Customer Anecdotes
“Hi does Detrack have a last mile route planner?"
“I am attempting to import from Detrack to Elastic route and it appears to have matching fields but when importing to Elastic route, it is not acknowledging the job order or time window from Detrack”
“Sorry I have updated Elastic route and pushed to Detrack but it doesn’t seem to be updated”
Role and Team
As the new and sole UX designer, I took over from the second phase. I collaborated with various teams across Detrack, Front-end and Back-end engineers for their expertise in building Elastic Route, Sales and Customer Support for insights on customer requests and workflows, and my Product Manager for competitive research, scoping phases, and defining sub-feature scenarios for launch.
Competitor Matrix
After analyzing competitors, only Onfleet and Route4Me were as strong as ElasticRoute. Unique features like manager group-based route planning were exclusive to ElasticRoute due to its integration with Detrack.
Few competitors supported pickup and drop-off logic, as it was complex—even Grab only had it in beta. Since ElasticRoute covered most essential routing features, aligning Detrack’s routing logic with it was a strategic advantage.
Customer Profiles
Types of workflows
Some of our users have courier mode - linked jobs that have pick up and drop off. As this was not the majority, we aimed to get the basic function out first.
Experience in Routing
Our route optimization had to be simple and easy to set up as some customers have never used a routing software before
Concept testing and user requests
When I took over, I refined the previous designer’s work and conducted concept testing with my product manager and 14 users with Phase 1’s design.
Phase 1 (Travelling Salesman Problem, TSP)
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Where users assigned jobs to drivers manually
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Then sequenced automatically by the system
Users found the design and experience simpler and easy to set up compared to existing workarounds. Some Elastic Route users were open to switching if feature parity was met.
Need for Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP)
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The auto distribution of jobs among drivers based on algorithms and factors like vehicle type (e.g., cold trucks for specific jobs)
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Marking phase 2 of Route optimization implementation.
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To justify purchasing Detrack at a higher price.
“Specific vehicles for specific jobs”
e.g Cold chain trucks for frozen food
“Zone based assignment and designated zones and clusters for preassigned jobs”
e.g Drivers dedicated to serving specific areas of a country or state
Design flow
Planning Multiple Routes (VRP)
01
Create Depots
Routes will need a starting point to begin with. Depots can also be tagged to drivers
02
Vehicle set up
Vehicle details like capacity and working hours, if provided, will be factored into route planning.
03
Select jobs and plan multiple routes
Jobs do not need to be assigned a driver unlike TSP. Select jobs > Actions > Plan multiple route
04
Configure route parameters
When planning routes, users can configure routing parameters like depots, route time window and tolls
05
View Route results
Users are notified when routes are generated and can view job distribution across drivers
06
Viewing individual driver routes
In each individual route for a driver, jobs can be rearranged, reverse order, or transferred
07
Sending route to drivers
Once satisfied, users can click ‘Send routes to drivers’. Jobs will then appear in the drivers’ app to complete
08
Populated route details
Job details like job sequence, ETA time & run number will be populated in the jobs table and drivers app
Pain point
Improvement
Time spent to manually arrange jobs for the best and shortest route possible
No more tedious planning needed, let the system generate optimized routes in seconds
Unsure of ETA time of each job and total time taken for all jobs to be completed
Route generated with run number, job sequences and ETA time provided
Unable to quantify live traffic conditions, zones and vehicle capacities / vehicle type
Configure routing parameters and let system auto match vehicles, zones and job requirements
Manual changing of drivers or order sequence
Easily edit routes, re-arrange or transfer jobs which are reflected in drivers app
New tier to upsell
Detrack Advanced
became the next upsell tier when route optimization was introduced. It provided a gateway for additional upgrades, gaining a stable user base over the months. As we built more features, users who required deeper functionality gradually upgraded.
User Cohort adoption
Users of Routing
120
8604
Current active users
Rounds of routes generated (Single and Multiple Routes)
*Statistics as of Aug 2024 to Feb 2025